马斯格雷夫论坛学术讲座

第56期

讲座主题：The Impact of Relative Price Changes in Healthcare on Hospital Choices and Economic Implications: Evidence from China

主讲人：王吉元 研究员

主持人：鲁建坤 副教授

时间：2023年4月20日（周四）14:00-15:30

地点：1号楼307会议室

主办单位：浙江省哲学社会科学重点研究基地浙江财经大学地方财政研究院

协办单位：浙江财经大学财政税务学院

主讲人简介：王吉元，中央财经大学保险学院、中国精算研究院研究员，荷兰格罗宁根大学经济学博士、中国科学院大学管理科学与工程博士。究领域为健康经济学、医疗保险。近年来在《Health Economics》、《Singapore Economic Review》、《管理评论》等期刊发表多篇论文。主持国家自然科学基金青年项目一项、参与教育部人文社科重大基地等项目多项。

摘要：In a healthcare market where patients can freely choose hospitals, it is important to understand to what extent healthcare prices play a role in affecting patients’ choices. This paper estimates the effect of changes in relative healthcare prices on patients’ hospital choices by exploiting a policy that changes patients’ cost-sharing at different levels of healthcare institutions in China. Using a unique hospitalization data set from China and a Regression Discontinuity in Time (RDiT) approach, we show that patients are sensitive to relative price changes when selecting different levels of healthcare institutes. In specific, when faced with lower cost-sharing at a primary care hospital and higher cost-sharing at a high-level hospital, patients significantly increase the visits to primary care hospitals and decrease visits to high-level hospitals. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the policy in strengthening primary care utilization in China. Further analysis of the economic implications shows that the efficiency among tertiary hospitals improves, while the policy leads to both efficiency gains and losses in the primary care sector.